Security Studies Events Page
Upcoming Events:
TBA
Past Events:
Panel Discussion “Who Governs Syria Now?” in SCITEC 207 on February 13, 2025, from 4 pm to 5pm
The Bashar al-Assad regime was overthrown in early December by the HTS Islamic group, which has established a transitional government in Syria. However, the future of Syria looks uncertain as the path towards democracy and prosperity faces many obstacles. Furthermore, the geopolitical situation in the Middle East has been altered dramatically, which offers both opportunities and dangers.
The panelists are:
- Dr Austin S. Matthews
- Dr Marie Olson Lounsbery
- Dr Mona Russell
- Dr Armin Krishnan
Everybody is welcome to join and there will be opportunity to ask questions.
Public Lecture in the Faulkner Gallery on September 17, 2024, at 5:00pm to 6:15pm
Aaron Abrams: “OSINT In National Security: Leveraging Commercially and Publicly Available Data for Enhanced Security”
Aaron Abrams is an ECU alum, who currently works in the Intelligence Community producing Open Source Intelligence.
When: Tuesday, September 17, 2024, from 5pm to 6:15pm
Where: Joyner Library, Faulkner Gallery
The event is organized by the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies program and has been funded by a donation from the Oak Foundation.
Public Lecture in Brewster C103 on March 21, 2024, at 5:00pm to 6:15pm
Dr. Robert McCreight: “The Era of Cognitive Warfare – What Next?”
After serving the United States government at the State Department and other federal agencies over a 35-year career, Dr. McCreight retired in 2004 and served as a consultant for major homeland security and national defense contractors. His professional career includes work as an intelligence analyst. treaty negotiator, arms control delegate to the UN, counter-terrorism advisor, political-military affairs analyst and Deputy Director of Global Scientific Exchanges at State Department. During his service at the U.S. Department of State he was a senior Soviet military analyst with INR and specialized in the assessment of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. Later in his professional career he performed assignments where he either managed or coordinated international post-disaster relief and humanitarian operations, developed peacekeeping policy, promoted global science and technology cooperation projects and helped design treaty verification systems. He also participated in the design and coordination of White House nuclear readiness command crisis exercises during the Reagan administration. During his federal career he designed, developed and coordinated well over 26 cabinet level strategic nuclear preparedness exercises, worked on Presidential Protection and Survivability Programs and directed the operation of several dozen senior-level military exercises involving theoretical force-on-force scenarios between the United States and the Soviet Union.
McCreight spent 27 years of combined active and reserve military service concurrently with his civilian work in U.S. Army Special Operations and has devoted 12 years to teaching graduate school as an adjunct at Georgetown, George Mason and George Washington Universities in subjects as diverse as disaster and emergency management, strategic intelligence, nonproliferation policy, homeland security policies, terrorism analysis, intelligence analysis and assessing WMD threats. He completed his doctoral degree in Public Administration in 1989 and remains active in graduate education programs in emergency and crisis management as well as security studies and terrorism analysis. He has also written and published over 27 articles on chemical weapons use, disaster management, disaster recovery, post-strike attribution, biological weapons threats to homeland security, crisis management, WMD scenario development and collegiate educational strategies for developing future crisis managers for government service. His textbook-Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation, 4th edition was published in 2022 and continues to be a popular resource in graduate schools. He has also co-edited a textbook on Homeland Defense published by CRC Press in October 2014 and written chapters in the CRC Series on Crisis Management and a chapter on NeuroWeapons in the James Giordano book NeuroScience and National Security. His recent publications for Small Wars Journal, US Army Mad Scientist, and Academia Biology focus on the risks and issues embedded in cognitive warfare and what McCreight calls NeuroStrike in his research.
Dr McCreight has taught graduate courses in national security, homeland security, emergency management, intelligence operations and foreign policy at several universities such as Georgetown, George Washington University, George Mason University, Virginia Tech University, the University of Nevada-LasVegas and National Defense University. He maintains an interest in emerging technologies posing a global threat.
Robert McCreight: “The War Inside Your Mind: Unprotected Brain Battlefields and Neuro-Vulnerability,” Academia Biology 2024.